Mandel to launch new TV ads (Updated)

By Alexander Burns

08/06/12 06:03 PM EDT

Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel is going back up on the air Tuesday with a new statewide TV buy, a GOP strategist tells me.

The youthful Republican state treasurer, who ran biographical ads earlier this year touting his service in the Marine Corps, is spending upwards of half a million dollars on the flight, the source said.

Mandel is challenging Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a race that has been a magnet for outside-spending groups, and that has helped make Ohio a jaw-droppingly expensive state to compete in.

UPDATE: Mandel's ad touts his performance as state treasurer -- which Brown's campaign has attacked aggressively -- in a mostly-positive tone, closing with a shot at Brown's record in Washington.

"You gave a big job to a young Marine named Josh Mandel," the spot begins, with crisp images of Mandel in uniform and on the job in Ohio. "Josh Mandel delivered results, earned Ohio the highest investment rating in the nation, cut his own budget, named watchdog of the treasury for strong fiscal performance."

Then, there's the contrast: "Career politician Sherrod Brown: more debt, less jobs. Time for a change."

In an email, Mandel press secretary Nicole Sizemore described the ad as a move toward making the case for Mandel as a responsible fiscal steward and an opponent of Washington D.C.

"Josh Mandel has a proven record of results as State Treasurer that includes saving Ohio taxpayers millions by cutting his budget, maintaining the highest possible ratings of the investment funds he manages, and standing up to Wall Street banks suspected of fraud," Sizemore said. "Because Sherrod Brown can’t run on his record of failure and lack of results in Washington, he has attempted to distract voters from Josh’s accomplishments and mislead them about his own. We’ll continue to contrast Josh’s proven record of results to Sherrod Brown’s two decades of failure in Washington throughout this campaign."

UPDATE II: Sherrod Brown's campaign responded to the ad in a statement from spokeswoman Sadie Weiner, keeping up the attack on Mandel's performance in office:

“Only someone as desperate to hide his record as Josh Mandel would pat himself on the back for a seventeen year old credit rating and attempt to fool Ohioans into believing he's done his job by bragging about an award from a conservative group that he received before becoming Treasurer … Ohioans know Josh Mandel skipped every single meeting of the billion dollar investment board he's supposed to chair during his first year in office, that he hired unqualified political cronies and friends with taxpayer dollars and is nothing more than a politician who can't be trusted.”